Chapter 10
TRYING HARDER
Much of my career was spent in industrial engineering, and for one period I developed expertise in work measurement. One particular method of work measurement was based on a set of standard times for each motion of the fingers, hand and body. So when the hand moved to pick up an object, the time was found by looking up in the table for the standard time taken to move the hand that many inches. In this way the time taken to assemble a piece of work could be determined, not by the hated stop-watch, but by measuring all the motions. And this could be done away from the work place by simulating the motions required to do the job. It really was an ingenious approach to work measurement. From this research it was clear that the speed of the job was limited by the speed of the motions, and this had a human limit. But what was also clear was that if the job had to be done in significantly less time, then the method of doing it must change. Now that was an important discovery. And this is an important lesson in many other aspects of life. To improve the output in any significant way, change the method don’t try to hurry. In other words, HURRYING and TRYING HARDER don't make a real big difference. New methods must be used.
In fact, it was determined that the increase in speed of work, using the same method of doing the work, and trying to work faster, could only increase output by 28% above normalpace.
So, to make any significant change, don’t just try harder in the same old way, go back to fundamentals. Find a better method.
More stories. I was on a consulting job doing job evaluation in a large organization and we were committed to describe and rate 10,000 jobs in one year. A huge challenge. We had quite a team working on it and we were completing about 3 job descriptions per team member per day. Working that way would not reach our target, even close, so I told the team members the urgency of getting an increase in productivity. They must try harder.
The days went by and the sense of urgency made no difference in output. Then I was talking to my brother Gordon who had just come back from a conference in New York on how to get a major increase in output on large projects. He said there are four ways:
1. Inject a massive amount of new money
2. Add a large number of workers to the job
3. Increase the quality risk
4. Make major changes in method
Well,wecouldn’taskformoremoney;wecouldn’t ask for more people on the job. So, we had only quality and method to work on. We had been writing job descriptions by personal one-on-one interviews.
Wedecidedthentotrainsupervisorsingroups to write the job descriptions of the positions under them, and our team member would edit them. This was indeed a major change in method. We held classes to train supervisors and the output increased dramatically. There was a small risk of quality, but we worked to reduce that as much as we could. Productivity went up to about 20 per team member per day, and we reached our target.
There is another rule to increasing output that I learned in my industrial engineering career. An Italian economist named Weber developed what is known as Weber's Law. Putting this in my own words it goes like this:
"To increase output arithmetically, you must change the input geometrically."
In other words, to get twice the output, it requires four times the input.
I was giving a talk to a group of supervisors in a paper mill when I was on a consulting assignment. I talked about Weber’s Law and then added, “To get any real action you have to blast!” The next day as I went around the plant, I got feedback like “What did you say to the bosses last night? They are raising particular hell to-day!” Perhaps “blast” was not the appropriate term from a human relations point of view but things were getting done.
To apply this to one's life, what is the message? Well, to make a significant change in your life, it is not enough to just try harder, you must change the method. And change it significantly. The same story.
Let’s put it this way. If we are not happy or satisfied in life and need a change, stop and think. Real change requires real effort and as we have seen, trying harder is not enough. New methods, new approaches are required. You can't keep on doing things in the same old way.
If you really want to change, make some basic change in the way you are doing things! Find a new way and make sure that it is a fundamental change. Maybe you will have to blast!
But watch out the consequences might surprise you.